Financial Resources
Need Help With Your Retirement Goals?
Defining Retirement Goals
Need help figuring out your retirement goals?
- Help define your retirement goals and expectations
- Review your current savings and sources of retirement income
- Identify savings shortfalls and ways to overcome them
If your contract offers a retirement plan from The Principal and you're eligible, login to access retirement plan information and planning tools. Click the following link for great tools that can help you determine what your expenses might be in retirement and how to plan accordingly.
Retirement Planning Calculator
IBEW Scholarships
The IBEW Founders' Scholarships honor the dedicated wiremen and linemen who, on November 28, 1891, organized the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Each year the International officers of the IBEW are pleased to offer its working members scholarships on a competitive basis. It is hoped that the awards will not only contribute to the personal development of our members but also steward the electrical industry that our founders envisioned.
This award is for $200 per semester credit hour or $134 per trimester credit hour at any accredited college or university toward an associate's, bachelor's, or postgraduate degree in a field that will further the electrical industry overall (as determined by the Founders' Scholarship Administrator). The maximum distribution is $24,000 per person over a period not to exceed 8 years.
Select this link for Rules of Entry
Union Plus Current and retired members of unions participating in any Union Plus program, their spouses and their dependent children (as defined by IRS regulations) are eligible to apply for this scholarship.
Scholarship could add up to $4,000.
Select this link for Details and Eligibility
At IBEW Local Union 48 we believe in assisting each other in sickness or distress. One of the many ways to achieve this is with the Sick Fund. It is funded by donations and fund raising efforts of Local 48.
The fund is available to provide assistance to members who are in serious financial difficulty due to illness or injury, who have been off work for at least thirty days and are not receiving financial assistance from other sources. The average gift is $550.
To make a request from the Sick Fund, appear at the next meeting of the Executive Committee. Committee meeting nights can be found in the Events Calendar or on the Meeting Dates page accessible from the Main Menu.
Unemployment Insurance "On the Hook"
Regardless of whether you are in Washington or Oregon, if your employer wants to put you on temporary furlough, be forewarned and forearmed – you must have a return to work date or you may have your unemployment benefits denied!
There is a mistake that some members are making when they are laid off by their employer but do not come back to the Hall (i.e. they go “on the hook”). The mistake is that they do not tell Unemployment that they have a specific return to work date.
Both Oregon and Washington have rules that govern this. In Oregon, when you take a temporary layoff, you are entitled to receive unemployment benefits without having to look for work, but only if the employer has, as of the layoff date, given you a date certain to return to work that is no later than four calendar weeks following the week in which the temporary layoff occurred. If that date passes, you must immediately begin seeking work in order to remain eligible for unemployment benefits. Additionally, the work you are returning to must either be full-time or pay as well if not more than your weekly unemployment benefit amount. (See OAR 471-030-0036(5)(b).
In Washington, the rule is very similar: WAC 192-110-015 also provides that you can be on “standby” for up to four weeks. Your employer can request to extend the "standby" for an additional four weeks for a total of eight weeks, but that extension is not automatically granted and must first be evaluated and approved by the Employment Security Department. Again, it is a condition of the unemployment rules that the employer has given you a specific return to work date. The Department will not approve unemployment if all you have is the prospect of future work or a promise of future work at some unspecified date.
Note: In Washington, the Department will not approve unemployment if you regularly work less than 40 hours, and the maximum amount of benefits that can be obtained while on “standby” is eight weeks in any benefit year.
Bottom line: If your employer wants to put you on the hook, make sure that you have a return to work date that is four weeks or less into the future. In Washington, there is a maximum of eight standby weeks, but those additional four weeks are not automatically granted. Oregon does not have that maximum, but you must still have a specific return to work date given to you at the time of layoff.
Remember: If you return to the Hall and sign the Out-Of-Work List, you are eligible for withdrawal of any supplemental unemployment funds you have in your Flex Account; if you stay on the hook, you are not.
